Ladies Kickin' Ass
The podcast where kickass women in the service and trades industries spill the real tea on building bold businesses and owning their success, without apology.
Hosted by Tanya Wilson, each episode dives deep with powerhouse entrepreneurs who are breaking ground in their fields and keeping it real about the highs, lows, and lessons learned along the way. These conversations aren’t just feel-good chats—they’re your battle plans for leveling up in business and life.
You’ll get the gritty, the pretty, and everything in between—actionable tools, mindset shifts, and real-life strategies for:
- Building teams that actually give a damn
- Creating a contagious workplace culture
- Marketing with confidence (and without the BS)
- Setting boundaries and finding alignment
- Thriving as a woman, mama, partner, and leader in this wild business world
Along the way, we’ll bring in experts in health, wellness, parenting, leadership, and personal development—because you are the most important system in your business.
🎧 New episodes drop every Tuesday—so hit subscribe and join us weekly for your dose of inspiration, education, and ass-kickin’ motivation.
Ladies Kickin' Ass isn’t just a podcast. It’s your squad. Your toolbox. Your sisterhood of badass women who get it. If you’re hustling to make your mark in a service-based business, welcome home. Let’s rise up and kick ass together!
Ladies Kickin' Ass
#142 - How to Grow Your Home Service Biz (Without Feeling Pushy)
In this powerhouse solo episode, Tanya dives deep into the real branding and marketing challenges faced by home service business owners today.
Drawing from her coaching work with service companies, she tackles the biggest pain points holding companies back — from feeling stuck in saturated markets, to not knowing what to post on social media, to feeling weird asking for reviews.
You’ll learn why educating, not just promoting, is key to building a loyal brand following, and how to shift your mindset around visibility and consistency.
Tanya also covers the power of SEO, blogging, and using AI to amplify your content (even if you're not a tech wizard!) — plus insider tips on leveraging platforms like Reddit and Quora to get your brand seen by more people.
If you're ready to stop playing small and start building a brand that attracts, connects, and converts — this episode is your step-by-step guide.
🎯 Key Takeaways:
Why feeling "saturated" is a sign you need a stronger brand, not a reason to quit.
How to educate through social media instead of constantly promoting.
Why you should automate asking for reviews — and how to do it authentically.
How often you should post (hint: you're not annoying people nearly as much as you think!).
What SEO actually means — and simple first steps to get started.
Using AI tools to help with blogging, content ideas, and boosting your website reach.
How Reddit, Quora, and other viral platforms can supercharge your blog traffic.
#HomeServiceMarketing #ServiceBusinessGrowth #BrandingTips #MarketingForServiceBusinesses #WomenInTrades #ServiceBusinessCoach #GrowYourBusiness #AIForSmallBusiness #SocialMediaStrategy #ContentMarketingForServices
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Welcome to Ladies Kickin' Ass, the no BS podcast for fierce, unstoppable women in the service industry. We're here to talk bold moves, big wins and real talk on what it takes to build the life and the business you love. Let's get fired up, hey, hey, badasses. Welcome back to the Ladies Kickin' Ass podcast. Today we are going to touch on something that I know is driving all of you crazy, but it's a real problem that we need to address and we need to talk about, and that is being found online. You know a lot of people get into the home service business, and they think you know, like, why are you doing that? The market is so crowded or it's you hear the term oversaturated, and you know it's all about defining who you are, who the business is, what you stand for and who the people are behind it. That will help you really stand out. So today we're going to jump into an episode that's just really the big pain points I've got seven of them for you that a lot of people deal with when they are trying to come up with a unique brand for their home service company. This is a no bullshit podcast, though, because we're going to talk about all of the things that we're all kind of thinking about but nobody really talks to you about. So, number one, that market is saturated. Why are you starting there? There's already so many electricians or HVAC or septic companies, but I really, truly believe there's room for everybody.
Speaker 1:You know, I was just having a conversation with one of my competitors, if you will call them that, last night. It was actually somebody that I helped build a business with, and I was speaking to this gentleman and he was talking about how he was actually going to go out on his own from the business that we had originally started together and start another business, and he was calling me for information. He was calling me for feedback. You know, we just had a great conversation about how, if we would all come together in an industry you know the old saying, the rising tide lifts all boats. That's exactly what you need to try to create here. So one of the first things I would tell you to do is to start partnering up with who these competitors are in your market and figure out how you can work together. I mean, I think that is really, really important that you do that, and I really truly feel like, too, for those people that are just going to be searching you out online, say they need a septic tank pumped and they don't know who to go to. So they go to their trusty friend, google or chat, gpt or any social media and they type in septic tank pumping are they going to find you? This is one of the biggest problems that we have is that somebody built you a business or a website for your business when you started in 2012. And it hasn't been updated since then. So we got to really make sure that you're standing out online so that you don't look like just another septic company, you don't look like just another pest control company, but you actually look like somebody that's got fresh ideas, fresh new ways of doing things. You've got technology that you're actually showing up to play the game.
Speaker 1:Number two is, I feel weird, asking for reviews. Oh my gosh. I hear this so many times and it just makes me crazy, because you know, the people that are scared to ask for reviews are often the ones that are also talking about how they have two bad reviews and they don't know how to get rid of them. They're concerned about getting rid of them and the most important thing for you to understand with the home service business is that those reviews, especially on Google. I would direct them all to Google and I'll tell you why in a minute. But I would highly highly recommend that you consider asking every single one of your customers for a review Because you will, if you're giving great service and you have great processes in place, be getting more positive reviews than negative reviews.
Speaker 1:Therefore, when you get a negative review which you will I think my company's pretty badass, but we still have some negative reviews. They don't sting as much. They also make your business look like you're human. You know we all make mistakes. Sometimes we don't all agree on how the ending of this should go. Many times a lot of my bad reviews or one star reviews we'll call them learning reviews come from real estate agents that are not happy that I didn't just pass their septic tank inspection so that they could sell the house, but out of integrity that we have at our business and integrity of what we do for the new buyer coming in. We're not just going to pass it to make some agent happy. We're actually going to do what is right. And when you get those negative reviews that come in, oh babe, I'm telling you that is the best learning tool ever. We've actually had people tell us that they picked us because they loved the way we responded to the jerk that left the review, so it can be a really great, awesome tool for you to use. So if you're not asking for reviews with every single one of your jobs that you go to, you're missing out on a huge free marketing opportunity, and we'll talk about it in a minute on ways to incentivize your guys to really push to get those reviews while they're actually on site at the job.
Speaker 1:Number three that we're going to talk about is I don't know what to post on social media. I have so many ideas on what to post on social media. I have the opposite problem, so we end up posting so much stuff. It's out of control sometimes. So it's really important, whether you're one way or the other way, that you make sure that you have a game plan for your social media, and what you want to use your social media for, I truly believe, is the best thing, is to educate your customers. Yes, we want to talk about specials that we're running and, yes, we want to talk about ways that we can offer a service and give them a great deal and do all of this stuff, but what we really, really, really want to talk to them about is how, whatever system you work on actually works. So let's take an HVAC company, for example. You want to talk about that. The air conditioner is more than just a box sitting there. What's in it? Educate them on why it's important to change out their filters. Educate them on what happens if they shut their thermostat off during the day and they think they're saving money, but then they got to come home and cool it down and it costs even more money to do that than it did to leave it alone in the first place. These are the incredible ways that you can sound like you know what the hell you're doing in your industry and this is what makes you stand out as an industry leader.
Speaker 1:You know, a lot of times on social media, I think, just as a personal way, we talk a lot about how many followers we have or how much engagement we have, or you know, I don't think that anybody's even seeing my stuff because nobody likes it and nobody does anything. It's so crazy the way that social media trends change, and I got a few little stats here for you on some of this, 80% of the people won't even call a home service, that they can't find on social media or that have no reviews. Isn't that crazy? 80%, because a lot of people are like, if they don't exist on social media, I'm not sure they even have a pulse anymore, because so many people actually go to social media to use that as they're searching for businesses that they need services from. Isn't that crazy, like? Honestly, google is number one for search engines that people use, and you know what? Number two is YouTube, which is Google too, but people go to YouTube trying to find people. They also go to Facebook.
Speaker 1:How many of you are part of Facebook groups, and people will go on and say, hey, do you know a good pest control company? Hey, do you have a great rain gutter guy? Do you have somebody that can come do window shades in my house? They're looking for people. If you're continuously on there pouring in education into those communities you're a part of, you'll be top of mind for those people that are asking for you. So don't be afraid of social media.
Speaker 1:What you need to understand with that, though, is that you have to engage on social media. You can't just throw posts up and expect to get great return or great engagement on your things. I highly challenge you that, if you have social media, start posting more. I aim for at least one time a day. I know that sounds like a lot, but there are not very many people that are seeing your posts, and we'll talk about that when we talk about the resolutions here in just a minute.
Speaker 1:But you have to be very, very consistent on social media to see any traction happen. And consistency means posting and engaging with other people that you follow. Go in and follow other people that you admire. Follow people from across the country. Maybe you can learn some things from them. When we first started doing social media for our septic company, we just started following a whole bunch of septic companies and then we started making comments on their things and they started commenting on our things, and it doesn't really matter whether it's another septic company or a customer or a real estate agent that's doing the commenting. It is that your post is getting some action, so more people will see it. So it's very, very important that you continue that consistency with your social media.
Speaker 1:The next one that I want to talk about is I don't want to bother people by posting too much, so this is just a slight subcategory under the one we were just talking about. But I talked to so many people at socials and we'll talk about social media, we'll talk about marketing and they're so afraid to speak up and tell people about their business. We can't be afraid to talk about our business anymore. Our business is who we are, it's how we take care of our families, it is how we take care of our employees families, and we have to stop hiding in plain sight. We're standing out here, we're getting irritated that people can't find us online yet we have free channel opportunities to promote and we're choosing not to.
Speaker 1:And this is where there's major, major stats that come out. If a business has 1000 followers, it has way low amount of people that are going to see them. Only about 10 to 15% of your followers will organically see that. So out of 1000, only 100 people will see that. And if you're posting real or stories, only about three to 5% will Reels do a little bit better, because they're a little more favored with the algorithm right now and I say right now because it changes all the time with Instagram and so you may get a little bit longer amount of exposure and you'll see those videos climb in views, more so than a post that literally disappears.
Speaker 1:I mean, think about it If you're scrolling through Instagram and you get scrolling down and you're like 10 posts in and then you accidentally scroll back up to the top. I don't know how that happens. It's like a magic little button you accidentally push all the time but you get back up to the top and you're like, okay, I'll just go back to that post and then you're like damn it, it's gone. That's because there's so many people posting all the time. It doesn't live there very long. So if people are in a very small window of time, we'll actually see that post that's there, let alone if you're just posting on stories. I mean, those suckers are like 30 seconds or less and then they're gone after they watch them. So that's not the best way to get a lot of traffic either.
Speaker 1:Right now we're seeing a ton of engagement on Instagram through carousels. Now, if you're new to social media, that might blow your mind. Just hit up Chet GPT and talk to him about what a Instagram carousel is. But we're seeing a lot of great traction on those. People are staying on posts longer and they're engaging and they're reading and they're learning and we're testing some of this out with our business. I know what the ladies kicking ass following on Instagram my carousels are doing way better than anything else is, and so it's really important that you continue to test and try new things, just so that you can make sure that you're staying with the trends and the ever-changing hellish bullish algorithm that we're all indentured to Number five, and this is a big one.
Speaker 1:I don't know SEO, which stands for search engine optimization. If you don't know, so I just kind of ignore it. That is literally like forgetting to unlock the door to your business every single day online. There are a lot of different facets to SEO, and there's a beautiful ability now with AI to be able to learn a lot about it, and if you can learn just a few things that you can go into your website and optimize, fantastic. I say that because a lot of service businesses tend to build their own websites, and if you're one of them, then you need to learn SEO. It's so important. You could have the most beautiful boutique store, and if you never unlock the door, nobody can come in and explore, and that's really the way that I want you to think about SEO If you aren't updating, if you're not making it look fresh and new and it looks like you built it for an old school monitor and it's teeny tiny print and it was built in 1995, people will think that business is outdated and they'll skip to the next one.
Speaker 1:We want to make sure that we're staying fresh and relevant and we want to make sure that we're continuously adding content to our site or changing it up so that we can be indexed by Google, and that's how you start organically being found online. Now I know there's a lot of people that are talking about AI taking over the organic reach of your website, and I will tell you what I've found with this. With my septic company, we have a very robust blog on our website and what I mean by that is that we have over 100 posts that talk about different things pertaining to septic systems. We post those blogs on different Reddit threads. We have definitely indexed them on different YouTube videos that we post on YouTube. But the more we stretch out that blog content, the more we are actually appearing as the actual brains of what AI is pulling the material from. And I'll give you an example. So if I get on Google and I type in what is a seepage pit.
Speaker 1:Two of the three results that come back from Google's AI are direct links to blogs on the Priority Pumping website, which is pretty cool. A lot of people aren't talking about them. Also, if you're in an industry like I am in septic, where people don't really utilize blogs and they don't take the free opportunity to educate their customers through their websites, you have massive ability to rank in that area, especially if people are searching by location. So be sure to make sure that you are just optimizing the hell out of your blogs. Make sure that you're continuously adding that new content. It can also be that you are adding that into your Google business profile. Some of you may know it as Google my Business. It's GBP now Google Business profile. If you are adding updates consistently in there, ai is starting to pull from those Google Business updates as well. So be sure that you're keeping your content nice and fresh on there so that you can continue to roll with all of the new things that AI is actually putting out there.
Speaker 1:Another thing that drives me crazy, and as we are moving into the franchise world, is people with stock photos on their websites. People in your community want to know what your business is about. They want to know who are the people in your company. Use photos of your technicians, use photos of your trucks, your fleet, your office staff. Whatever you need to do, whether that is hiring a photography student for 100 bucks to come take photos, or if you actually splurge and spend $1,000 on a branding shoot it'll be the best $1,000 in marketing that you spend, because the ability to multi use those photos and those behind the scenes and videos that you'll get from that shoot with a professional will last you an entire year. I suggest that people do this at the beginning of every single year, as we know that our teams grow and we have people come, we have people go and we want to make sure that we're inclusive of the people that are there, but that is one of the best ways for you to be able to stand out and be unique.
Speaker 1:One thing that we see often in our septic business and if you go on to Canva, it drives us crazy. My marketing guru at my office, heidi, and I laugh at this all the time whenever we get it on to other people's websites. It's like blue pants that looks like he's kind of working on a railroad and he's got like yellow dishwashing gloves on and he's pulling a septic hose. I don't know who took the stock photography, but they had to have made a fortune because every septic company, I swear, has these photos on it. Make sure that you're showing who the technicians are. Who's going to show up at their house Like who the hell's Seth? Who's Heidi? Who's Lauren? Do you ever get on the phone with people and you like, try to picture what they look like after you talk to them on the phone. Our people show up all over our social media. They're all over our website. I refuse to use a stock image for anything, and that's what I would love for you to start thinking about when you're building your brand.
Speaker 1:How are you unique? How are you different than the others? Do you want to show up with blue pants and yellow gloves like all of the competitors? Or do you want to show up with blue pants and yellow gloves like all of the competitors? Or do you want to show up and look like you're an actual human in the community? And that's a house from Arizona in the background, not a mansion from California. You know what I mean. Not that we don't have mansions here, but they do look different.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying and last but not least, is that you never talk about your business. You're out with friends, you're out at events. You just want to talk to everybody else about what they do. And you're like I just have a little, you know, window shade company. I just have like a little floor cleaning company, I just do floors. Be proud, stand up tall and be so proud of what you do. When you have passion around your business and the things that you do for others, you will transfer that passion into that person even wanting to know more.
Speaker 1:When I go to an event and people ask me what I do is, I teach people about wastewater. I have a septic and commercial wastewater business and we love to educate people on the best way to maintain those. Oh well, is there a lot of septic here? Like, people will just automatically start asking you questions because you just told them that you love to educate people on it. It's a great opener and it's a great opportunity to be able to tell people what you do without just saying I own a septic company. And it's a great opportunity to be able to tell people what you do without just saying I own a septic company and then you jump to the next thing.
Speaker 1:I'm so passionate about teaching people what to do with their systems or how to take care of them, to avoid having costly repairs to take care of them, even though I do those costly repairs. I'd love to see people get 50 years out of a system we know indefinitely. It's going to fail at some point. That's just how they work. But I would love to be able to educate them on the things that they need to know about that system to make sure that it's not going to fail earlier than it should have because of lack of attention and maintenance. So be able to have conversations with people and if you're not sure what to say, stand in front of the mirror and have a conversation with yourself. Think of some things. I know you hear me talk about chat, gpt all the time or whatever your favorite AI is now because there's so many of them. But jump in there and just brainstorm. Hey, I'm going to a mixer tonight. What's a great way to lead off talking about my window washing company. It's fascinating Once you kind of teach it the way that you talk, what it actually comes up with.
Speaker 1:There's so many opportunities out there now to just ask questions and get answers from that we can no longer use. I don't know how to do SEO. I don't know what to post. I don't know how to ask for reviews. I don't know what to post. I don't know how to ask for reviews. I don't know is not an excuse that we're going to take into 2025. We're going to start finding solutions for this and I've got a few of them here for you that we can just get to really quickly so that you can understand what you need to do If you fall into any of these seven categories of things that you're avoiding doing, to build your brand of your service business.
Speaker 1:Number one we're going to get really clear on who we are and what we do. Of course, you have a landscaping business, so you cut grass. What else do you do and why do you do it? Cut grass? What else do you do and why do you do it? Tie those things together in something that you tell people at a networking event or the next time you meet somebody on the street and they ask you what to do, and they will ask questions. Give them a reason to follow up with a question. It's so important that we do that. We want to make sure that we're building a reputation, not just a business.
Speaker 1:People want to buy relationships. They want to buy from people. They can get the same service from 50 other companies that are out there. Why'd they pick you? And if you got the opportunity because they did pick you do not let them down. Do the best that you can do.
Speaker 1:You know, there was this incredible podcast I was listening to this week and they were talking about different forms of pride, and one of the greatest forms of pride ever is knowing that you did the best job that you could do, even if there's nobody there looking. You know, it's one of those things where it's like don't step over the trash. That's did the best job that you could do, even if there's nobody there looking. You know, it's one of those things where it's like don't step over the trash that's on the floor or leave it better than you found it. That's what I was always taught as a kid.
Speaker 1:Those are the things that get you massively important five-star reviews all over Google, yelp, wherever you tend to direct them to. It's so important. Oh and I did tell you earlier that I was going to tell you why to send them to Google. You want those reviews on Google so that when people are checking you out in the local SEO portion of the Google search return, so, like you can see, there's three companies that come back with a map. It's typically the closest to where you are. You want to stand out as the rock star choice out of those three people that come back out and I'll tell you, it makes a massive difference if you are, especially if you're in an industry where people don't ask for a lot of reviews.
Speaker 1:My company in septic is one of the youngest companies in the valley and we have more reviews by two times than the company that's been in business for 40 years, and the only reason that is well, we're pretty damn good at what we do and we're really good people. But the other thing is that we have automated asking for those reviews, and what I mean by that is that you can actually use a company that will connect with your CRM that you're using, that will send out automatic invitations via text or email in a campaign style to where they'll ask not once, maybe two, three, four or five times for that review. Once, maybe two, three, four or five times for that review. We get more reviews on the second touch, meaning second text message that goes out than any other way. So be sure to set that up as automating. If you need help with that, please reach out to me. I'd be happy to help direct you in a way and the software that we use for that. But it is super, super important that you do that and then incentivize your technicians to talk to them about leaving a review. I pay my guys 50 bucks for every review. They get back that has their name in it and let me tell you they're pretty incentivized to keep talking to people about that and I know not everybody will leave one. But if you can talk to them about that and the guys can reinforce it while they're out there and then you have a campaign that's automated, you'll get a lot more reviews than just asking them one time via email after a service is done that they may or may not read.
Speaker 1:The next thing is getting personal with your account. Get personal with your social media accounts. Get personal with your website. Let them see who the people are behind you. People love stories. Why did you start this business website? Let them see who the people are behind you. People love stories. Why'd you start this business? Why did you start it in the area that you started it out. What do you do for the community? How else are you involved in different kinds of businesses and what is your background?
Speaker 1:People are very interested in that and, ladies, if you're owners of this business, get in and get woman owned designation and promote the shit out of that throughout your website. I have customers several a month that tell us we picked you because you're a woman owned company, and it's not always the women that say that. So definitely look for that designation. Google has a designation for that and Yelp has a designation for that. That I know of offhand. But if there's another place where you like to have business listings at, definitely put in there that you're a woman owned business.
Speaker 1:It's really important. We want to show up, we want to stay consistent and we want to make sure that we are really being the true, authentic people that we say we're going to be. If we say we're going to come out and do a great job, go out and do a great job. And if you have employees and sometimes you're kind of this one subpar and this one's kind of here and there, make sure that you set a new standard this year, in 2025. What is the standard to work at your amazing business? What is the standard for them to excel at this incredible business that they've chosen to work at, excel at this incredible business that they've chosen to work at. It's really, really, really important that we do that.
Speaker 1:So I want you to agree with me today, as we wrap up here, that we're not blending in with everybody else anymore. You're going to make a plan this weekend to figure out how you can stand out from the other people that provide your kinds of services in your area. And there is no more. Babe. You weren't born to blend in. You were born to stand out. We're not hiding in plain sight anymore. Now go kick some ass. That's a wrap, ladies. Now go out there, own the hell out of your dreams and keep kicking ass. Want to keep this fire going? Connect with us on social. All the links are in the show notes, and if you're ready for a sisterhood that levels up life and business, be sure to check out Badass Inner Circle. Stay bold, stay fierce and be unapologetically you. I'll catch you on the next episode. Let's do this.
